“Or maybe it’s in these.” Hand unsteady, Amanda withdrew the GPS receiver from her pocket.
Viv lurched back as if struck. “We’re bombs? He can blow us up whenever he feels like it?”
“Whenever you disobey,” the voice said.
The abrupt sound in Amanda’s ears startled her.
“Whenever you stop playing by the rules,” the voice continued.
“Rules? What damned rules are you talking about?” Ray shouted. “I haven’t heard anything about—”
“Discovering the nature of the rules as you proceed is the essence of every great game.”
“You think this is a fucking game?”
“Ray, it isn’t necessary to use obscenities.”
“A game?” Ray looked around as if fearing for his sanity. “The bastard thinks he’s playing a game.”
“In which one hour has now elapsed. You have thirty-nine hours remaining. Do not waste them.”
“What difference does it make?” Viv spoke so forcefully that the sinews in her neck bulged like ropes. “You’re going to kill us anyhow!”
“I’m aware of only one game in which the winners were killed. It was a ball game played by the ancient Maya. That is not my intention. Winners should be rewarded. What happens to losers is another matter.”
“So how do we win?” Ray demanded.
“That is something you must discover.”
“The map coordinates he gave us.” Amanda wiped away more tears. Her cheeks felt raw. “We need to reach that area.”
Derrick nodded. “We’re not doing any good standing here. We need to move.”
“And discover the rules,” the voice told them.
Ray studied the screen on his GPS receiver. His whisker stubble made his narrow face look haggard. He seemed all too aware that at any moment the receiver could blow him up. “This way. Toward the trees.”
Amanda forced herself to put one foot in front of the other. Her legs aching, her lungs still demanding oxygen, she neared the trees.
“Cottonwoods,” Derrick said. “They need a lot of water.”
Viv looked around. “There must be an underground stream.”
“And all we need is a backhoe to get to it,” Ray said.
The shadows of the trees provided relief from the heat. Then Amanda was in the sun again. The ground rose. Sweating, she climbed.
Ray checked his GPS receiver. “The incline’s steeper than it looks. We’re at six thousand feet now.” He sounded out of breath.
“Go up on a diagonal,” Derrick said.
“Right. Use a switchback pattern,” Viv told them. “You expend more energy hiking straight up a slope than you do if you climb back and forth.”
“Very good,” the voice said. “Use your resources.”
Amanda felt pressure in her knees from trudging up. Slowly, the expanse of the rest of the valley revealed itself.
“Holy…” Amanda straightened in awe.
2
A lake. About a hundred yards long, it glistened below them. Amanda thought of light reflecting off a jewel. As the group stared down, she heard their rapt breathing.
“The voice told us we’d find what we needed,” Derrick said.
“I’ve seen the world from the top of Everest,” Viv murmured. “But what I’m looking at now is the most beautiful…”
“So, what are we waiting for?” Ray started down. “After the ten days I spent getting chased in Iraq, I promised myself I’d never be thirsty again.”
Derrick and Viv followed Ray down the slope, all of them breaking into a run. Amanda peered around, feeling threatened by the vastness surrounding her. The mountains felt close and yet far, tricking her sense of distance. She was reminded of a psychology course she’d taken in college, an experiment in which natives who lived in a jungle were brought into an immense field. The natives were so accustomed to having their vision blocked by trees that the open space overpowered them. Many developed agoraphobia.
Never having been anywhere in which the horizon wasn’t blocked by buildings or trees, Amanda now understood the natives’ fear. But in her case, the fear was caused by the realization that everything in the vastness around her was a possible threat. Unlike the Paragon Hotel, where danger was limited to the rooms in the building, here death had what felt like infinite space in which to hide.
“Aren’t you going to join them?” the voice asked.
Amanda stifled her surprise. “I’m just admiring the view.”
“Really? For a moment, it seemed that the view paralyzed you. Take a look at the screen on your GPS receiver. Do the coordinates I gave you correspond with that lake?”
Amanda was still learning to use the device, but even to her, it was obvious that the red needle indicating their destination was pointed away from the lake and toward a spot on the hill. She glanced to the right and saw a plateau on which lay the ruins of a building. “Is that where we’re supposed to go?”
“To play the game, you must learn the rules.”
“Ray,” Amanda spoke into her microphone. “You passed the coordinates.”
The group kept rushing toward the lake.
“Derrick. Viv. We’re not supposed to go to the lake. There’s a ruined building up here. That’s our destination.”
The group didn’t look back.
“Can’t you hear me?” Amanda asked louder. “The lake isn’t where we’re supposed to go!”
“In fact, they can’t hear you,” the voice said. “I isolated our conversation.”
“Why? I don’t understand. What are you doing?”
When the voice didn’t reply, Amanda felt another premonition. “Stop!” she yelled to the group.
Either her voice didn’t carry, or else they were too fixated on the water to pay attention to anything else.
“No! Stay away from the lake!” Amanda charged down the slope, dodging rocks and sagebrush. “Wait!”
Viv turned, frowning in Amanda’s direction.
“Stop!”
Viv called something to Derrick and Ray, who paused and looked back. Thank God, Amanda thought. The group waited as she ran to them.
“What’s wrong?” Derrick asked.
Amanda heard him through her ear phones now. The two-way radio was operating normally again. “He can isolate our conversations. He told me the coordinates he gave us don’t correspond with this lake.”
Ray glanced at the needle on his GPS receiver. “That’s true. They match something on the slope.”
“A ruined building,” Amanda explained.
“But why didn’t he tell the rest of us?”
“Screwing with our minds,” Derrick said in disgust.
“Fine.” Ray drew his tongue along his dry lips. “We’ll investigate the building. But the water’s closer. I’m not walking away without a drink.”
3
A breeze rippled the lake, creating white caps.
“Is it safe?” Ray wondered.
Amanda gazed along the shore. “I don’t see any skeletons or dead animals.”
“Look how clear the lake is.” Viv pointed. “Fish.”
“If the water was poisoned, it would kill them,” Ray said.
“Not necessarily,” Derrick objected. “Think about the mercury and other toxins in some lakes. Fish somehow live in them, but that doesn’t mean the water’s safe. On Everest, even melted snow has toxins. We treat everything we drink with iodine tablets.”
“Yeah, well, in case you haven’t noticed, we don’t have any way to purify the water.” Ray took out his lighter, snapping it open and shut as he debated with himself. “When I was in Iraq, running from insurgents, I drank some awfully dirty water. It gave me a fever. But I survived.” He put away his lighter and knelt, his reflection rippling in the water. “My mouth’s so dry, my tongue feels swollen.”